Demographic spread charts

Demographic and organizational comparisons often provide some of the most interesting data points for most people. However, they can also be quite confronting where certain groups within an organization stand out with particularly low scores for example. In this sense we can often spot or identify certain micro-cultures within an organization. Sometimes these results are not surprising and simply support other information you might have while at other times it may provide some new insights.

You may have already noticed some of the internal differences as you've looked through the data but it can be useful to return to the Engagement factor (or other key outcome measure) as a way of getting a good comparative overview.

If you go back to the Insight report and click once into the Engagement factor (or other factor you're measuring) you'll see all of your demographic and organizational groups listed like in the example below. You can use the spread line to see which groups have more variance in scores.

These spread charts show you quickly and easily where your highest and lowest scoring groups sit and where all of your other groups sit across the company as well. In the above map we can see that the Finance department has by far the lowest Engagement score and Sales has the highest. We can also see that our Marketing team is very engaged (quite common) and that there are some other smaller differences within the organization. Hovering over the departments or circles will highlight the group's specific scores and population size for finer comparison.

It is important not to get too fixated on small differences here but to again focus on where we see the biggest differences. What should we take note of here then:

Groups with very high scores: These groups provide an opportunity to understand and learn from. What are they doing so right? How might they be being supported better by the organization?

Groups with very low scores: These groups represent opportunities for big improvements. How might we help and support them? Do they need some structural change or better communication and involvement?

Large or important groups with lowish scores: These are groups that we might view as strategically important due to their size or critical role in the organization. Even where these groups are not the lowest we may still identify them for targeted support or improvement.

Another way we can get some very detailed demographic and organizational comparisons is by using the Heatmap report.